Bi Book Club: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Welcome, bi bookworms, new and old! You see,

Methought as autumn looms and orange leaves fall,
T’would be a lark for all us to recall
The most bi verses in our history.
Verily, many of us in school days
Were bound to read and report on his verse;
Though mark me, friends! Will Shakespeare was no curse,
But was, in fact, a vessel of th’queer gaze.
Tis true! The Bard, oft praised and loathed alike
By teachers and their students, would “get down”
With country wife and men in London-town —
Though oft historians from his records strike.
So listen, dears, as we explore his sonnets —
It gets steamy; hold onto your bonnets.

For the pedantic audiences out there — yes, I know, it’s not perfect iambic pentameter, but c’mon. I’m not a genius. I’m not a member of LFO.

Anyway. I love Shakespeare. I’ve adored him since I took down a copy of Romeo and Juliet from my family friend’s bookshelf when I was ten and devoured every word I read. I was an English major. My favorite episode of Doctor Who is “The Shakespeare Code” (and this scene in particular). The first monologue I ever performed was from The Comedy of Errors. (Coincidentally, when I traveled to Europe for the first time, my must-see stop was attending a show at the Globe Theatre — which was playing Comedy of Errors!) I often refer to him as “my favorite dead husband.” (I have a few.) 

Zounds, I even have a picture of him in my bedroom.

Yes, you have my permission to be jealous. It is really cool.

So, yeah. It’s fair to say I’m a fan of Shakespeare.

That said, I hadn’t read the sonnets since I was in college — and they were selective examinations, at that. So I thought for this Bi Book Club, it might be fun to focus on that hallowed selection of verse as a collected work.

Before I go too much further into this subject, I should note — as I do with all my reviews — that there will be SPOILERS for the content in order for me to discuss the subject. I know that probably seems silly, but it’s better to err on the side of caution. But if you haven’t read the sonnets and would love to see what they’re all about, you can read them all for free, cut-and-dry, right here.

One of the first things I noticed as I went through them is that not just the most famous one — Sonnet 18 — left its mark on literature and other media. Oh, no — snippets of the poems show up everywhere in our culture, in ways that we rarely even recognize. Sure, Emma Thompson famously inserted Sonnet 116 into her Oscar-winning screenplay adaptation of Sense and Sensibility (1995). But Proust’s translators used a line from Sonnet 30 to title his seminal novel — “remembrance of things past.” Heck, even hair metal band Poison can attribute their most famous ballad to the opening line from Sonnet 35 — “Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud.” So the argument that Shakespeare’s sonnets — which were arguably more popular during his lifetime than his plays — don’t have as long a cultural reach is a moot point.

But I should get to my queerest of points. Was Shakespeare bi?

His sonnets sure were.

Looking at the Sonnets as a collective and as a narrative, we see the speaker of the poem addressing for the first 126 sonnets a “Fair Youth” (eventually distinguished as a “he”), then later a Dark Lady (and, yes, a Rival Poet, but we’re not gonna focus on him very much). But while going down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out exactly who Shakespeare wrote these sonnets for is a fun academic exercise, I want to limit this discussion into certain social contexts. What I think is crucial here is to articulate not only the relationships discussed amongst the poems’ themes but the emotional progression.

While it does seem that the speaker in the first twenty or so sonnets is encouraging the male youth to procreate and pass on his beauty, the narrative shifts eventually to include the writer’s attraction to the subject — especially in Sonnet 20, saying to give his issue to women in the final couplet but to save emotional love for himself.

A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all 'hues' in his controlling,
Much steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

However, this love seems to eventually go unrequited, and the themes of the sonnets go on to eventually get broody, depressive, and sullen — still beautiful and tackling complex issues such as fidelity and immortality, but they are definitely the words of a spurned lover.

This scorned mood takes a turn when the same speaker meets and starts talking about the Dark Lady in defiantly lascivious terms (check out Sonnet 133, y’all).

When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.

That eventually fizzles out as well, but Shakespeare covers more than just the themes of love in these sonnets — admiration, aging, and death all come under complex examination in these highly stylized lines as well.

It’s usually about this time I have to say where I find fault regarding the work at hand, but THIS IS SHAKESPEARE. That is a… mighty tall order to ask of this humble worshipper of the Bard. But if I really have to apply my modern criticism lens to it… the verses do start to get creepy as the speaker realizes he ain’t gonna win.

If we were looking at this in a modern lens and these poems were given to the actual subject — dozens of brooding meditations full of pleading and ire — I’d categorize them as a form of stalking and harassment, even if he does give a final farewell in Sonnet 126.

But that said, it was also trendy for Elizabethan aristocracy to give their patronage to writers, so these sonnets may have gone under the umbrella of 1) privacy (apparently Shakespeare never intended to have them published), and/or 2) a writing exercise exploring all the triumphs and tribulations of love in the trajectory of a love affair — going from attraction, desire and lust, rejection, to pain and finally to acceptance. While I’m not an apologist, I do think we should at least give this theory a possible chance to prove its buoyancy. I’d hate to think of my favorite dead husband as a fuckboy, but it’s possible (he was a real name-caller to the Dark Lady in the end).

So there we have it. If nothing else, the Sonnets demonstrate attraction (if not consummation) towards more than one gender by the author. So Shakespeare was #Bi2. If you need a breath of fresh, springy air that reminds you of “the darling buds of May” and the euphorias of love, the Sonnets are a great collection of poems to curl up with and spend a thought-provoking afternoon.

Goodnight, goodnight — parting is such sweet sorrow. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)